By Adam Andrzejewski for RealClearInvestigations
Topline: Nearly 6,000 Internal Revenue Service employees and contractors owe $50 million in overdue taxes, according to a federal audit published in July.
Key facts: The tax-dodging employees represent 5% of the IRS workforce. Roughly two-thirds of them still do not have a plan in place to pay their taxes properly.
Federal law requires the IRS to fire workers who intentionally don’t pay their taxes, but auditors said, “this disciplinary action is not always enforced.”
The IRS disciplined 1,068 employees between October 2021 and April 2023 — including 139 who “willfully” paid their taxes incorrectly — but only 20 of them were fired. Others had their cases “mitigated” because they had been working for the IRS for a long time or had high job performance ratings.
Seventy-six employees were suspended, mostly for two weeks or less.
Auditors also found that the IRS rehired 397 employees and 115 contractors who previously had conduct issues, including 282 workers with more than one conduct or performance issue. The “conduct issues” ranged from unauthorized access to taxpayer returns to sexual assault and criminal behaviors. Eighty-five of them previously had issues paying their taxes, and 306 had “unacceptable” job performance.
Background: A previous audit found that the federal government as a whole had 149,000 employees with $1.5 billion in unpaid taxes in 2021.
Meanwhile, everyday citizens continue to fund the IRS’ $4.9 billion payroll. The agency paid six-figure salaries to 11,846 people in 2022, according to payroll records at OpenTheBooks.com.
That includes employees supposedly hired to help taxpayers. The IRS’ “taxpayer experience officer” makes $200,000, and the “national taxpayer advocate” makes $203,000.
Search all federal, state and local government salaries and vendor spending with the AI search bot, Benjamin, at OpenTheBooks.com.
Critical quote: “Thank you for committing to ‘trying to rebuild trust’ in the IRS by holding the agency ‘accountable to taxpayers,’” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) wrote in a letter to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel. “Today is a great day to demonstrate the seriousness of that pledge by making the thousands of tax-evading tax collectors at the IRS either pay up or pack up. Taxpayers will never trust the IRS when the agency’s own auditors can’t even pass a tax audit.”
Sen. Ernst spearheaded the Congressional measure mandating the audit and leading to these disclosures.
Summary: It’s crazy to think that nearly 6,000 employees working for the tax collection agency – whose salaries are paid by hard working taxpayers – are tax cheats!
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Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.